“I would,” said Walker. He looked back at me. “I can’t speak for what kind of reception you can expect from Mark. The three of us might have worked together to end the Lilith War, but you can’t rely on that to mean anything. His collection is all that really matters to him these days. He’s come a long way from the man I and your father once knew. Don’t turn your back on him.”
I considered the point. “Can I say you sent me?”
Walker shrugged. “If you think it’ll do any good. Find the Recording, John. And then, if you’ve got any sense, destroy it.”
“The Unnatural Inquirer owns exclusive rights to the Afterlife Recording!” Bettie said immediately.
“There is that,” said Walker. “Certainly I couldn’t think of a better way to discredit it.”
Bettie started to say something else, but I took her firmly by the elbow, levered her up out of her chair, nodded quickly to Walker and moved her off towards the door. She made a show of fighting me, but I could tell she was glad of a way to leave Walker without losing face.
“The way you and he talked,” she said, as we walked across the lobby. “You two are close, aren’t you? I never knew that. I don’t think anyone does…There’s a lot going on there that you’re not telling me.”
“Of course,” I said. “I’m protecting you.”
“From what?”
“From never being able to sleep again.”
We left the Londinium Club, and strolled unhurriedly through the sleazy streets of the Nightside. Amber light from the street-lamps was easily shouldered aside by the fierce electric colours of the flashing neon signs, and the grubby pavements were crowded with preoccupied, anxious figures, all intent on their own private dreams and damnations. Sweet sounds and madder music blasted out of the open doors of clubs where the fun never stopped, and you could dance till you dropped. Brazen windows showed off all the latest temptations, barkers boasted of the attractions to be found inside for the discerning patron, and sin went walking openly down the street in the very latest fuck-me shoes.
The traffic roared past, never slowing, never stopping, because it wasn’t there for us.
Visiting the Londinium Club’s dining-room had made me peckish, so I stopped at a concession stand and treated Bettie and me to something wriggling on a stick. The meat was sharp and spicy, and just a bit crunchy.
“Would I regret it if I was to ask exactly what this is that I’m eating?” said Bettie, as we continued down the street.
“Almost certainly,” I said cheerfully.
“Then I won’t ask. Am I supposed to eat the head, too?”
“If you want.”
“But it’s looking at me!”
“Then eat it from the other end.”
“You really know how to show a girl a good time, Taylor.”
We walked a while in silence, chewing thoughtfully.
“I’ve never been to the Museum of Unnatural History,” Bettie said finally. “I always meant to go and take a look at what they’ve got there. I understand they have some really interesting exhibits. But it’s not really me. I don’t do the educational thing.”
“They’ve got a Tyrannosaurus rex,” I said.
Bettie threw away her stick and looked at me. “What, the complete skeleton?”
“No, in a cage.”
Her eyes widened. “Wow; a real T. rex! I wonder what they feed it…”
“People who litter, probably.”
The Museum of Unnatural History is very modern-looking. The French may have a glass pyramid outside the Louvre, but we have a glass tesseract. An expanded cube that exists in four spatial dimensions. A bit hard on the eyes, but a small price to pay for style. The tesseract isn’t merely the entrance to the Museum, it contains the whole thing inside its own very private and secure pocket dimension. The Museum needs a whole dimension to itself, to contain all the wonders and marvels it has accumulated down the years; from the Past, the Present, and any number of Future time-lines.
I walked steadily forward into the glass tesseract, Bettie clinging firmly to my arm again, and almost immediately we were standing in the Museum’s entrance lobby. I say almost immediately; there was a brief sensation of falling, of alien voices howling all around, and a huge eye turning slowly to look in our direction…but you tend to take things like that in your stride in the Nightside. The lobby itself was quaintly and pleasantly old-fashioned. All polished oak and brass and Victorian fittings, marble floors with built-in mosaics, and any number of wire stands packed with books and pamphlets and learned volumes on sale, inspired by the many famous (or currently fashionable) exhibits. Once again the ticket barrier opened itself for me, and Bettie looked at me, impressed.
“This is even better than having an expense account. Did you do something important for the Museum, too?”
“No,” I said. “I think they’re just scared of me.”
The uniformed staff were all Neanderthals—big and muscular, with hairy hands, low brows, and chinless jaws filled with large blocky teeth. The deep-set eyes were kind, but distant. Neanderthals performed all the menial work in the Museum, in return for not being exhibits. They were also in charge of basic security, and rumour had it they were allowed to eat anyone they caught. I asked one to take us to the Director of the Museum, and he hooted softly before beckoning us to follow him. He had a piercing in one ear, and a badge on his lapel saying UNIONISE NOW!
He led us deep into the Museum, and Bettie’s head swung back and forth, trying to take in everything at once. I was almost as bad. The Museum really does have something for everyone. A miniature blue whale, presented in a match-box, to give it some scale. I wondered vaguely how it would taste on toast. More disturbingly, half of one wall was taken up with a Victorian display of stuffed and mounted wee winged fairies, pinned through the abdomen. Only a few inches tall, the fairies were perfectly formed, their stretched-out wings glued in place and showing off all the delicate colours of a soap bubble. They had many-faceted insect eyes, and vicious barbed stingers hung down between their toothpick legs. In the next room there were tall glass jars containing fire-flies and iceflies, mermaids with monkey faces, and a display of alien genitalia through the ages. Bettie got the giggles.
On a somewhat larger scale, one whole room was taken up with a single great diorama featuring the fabled last battle between Man and Elf. The dozens of full-sized figures were very impressive. The Men, in their spiked and greaved armour, looked brave and heroic, while the Fae looked twisted and evil. Which was pretty much the way it was, by all accounts. There was a lot of blood and gore and severed limbs, but I suppose you need that these days to bring in the tourists. Another huge diorama showed a pack of werewolves on the prowl, under a full moon. Each figure showed a different stage of the transformation, from man to wolf. They all looked unnervingly real; but up close there was a definite smell of sawdust and preservatives.
Another group of figures showed a pack of ghouls, teaching a human changeling child how to feed as they did. The Museum of Unnatural History presented such things without comment. History is what it is and not what we would have it be.
There were a fair number of people around, but the place wasn’t what you’d call crowded, despite all the wonders and treasures on display. People don’t tend to come to the Nightside for such intellectual pleasures. And tourism’s been right down since the recent wars. The Museum is said to be heavily subsidised, but I couldn’t tell you who by. Most of the exhibits are donated; the Museum certainly didn’t have the budget to buy them.
The uniformed Neanderthal finally brought us to the Museum’s current pride and joy, the Tyrannosaurus rex. The cage they’d made to hold it was huge, a good three hundred feet in diameter and a hundred feet high. The bars were reinforced steel, but the cage’s interior had been made over into a reconstruction of the T. rex’s time, to make it feel at home. The cage contained a primordial jungle, with vast trees and luxurious vegetation, under a blazing sun. The illusion was perfect. The terrible heat didn’t pass beyond the bars, but a gusting breeze carried out the thick and heavy scents of crushed vegetation, rotting carrion, and even the damp smells of a nearby salt flat. I could even hear the buzzing of oversized flies and other insects. The trees were tall and dark, with drooping serrated leaves, and what ground I could see was mostly mud, stamped flat.